Assessment of ecological capacity for urban planning and improving resilience in the European framework

Abstract

The basic idea underlying this research is that urban planning is one of the main causes of environmental degradation. Despite its relevance in impacting ecosystems, the current methodological assessments across Europe still fail to include spatial planning as a relevant factor. This paper aims to formulate an innovative methodology for the evaluation of ecosystems for protecting land at risk of degradation. This methodology is exemplified by the case of Spanish spatial planning applied in the Community of Madrid, being also capable to be employed in other European State Members after a cartographic adaptation. The proposed methodology specifically implements a European approach to the scale of regional and local spatial planning based on the “Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services” (MAES) project. Among the main results, four outcomes stand out. The first is the novelty to provide a methodology capable of dealing with natural values at regional and municipal levels based on a spatial-planning-based scale (1:20,000). The second result regards the incorporation of new attributes tied to existing ecosystems during the drafting of spatial plans, thus improving the quality of the information to make better decisions in terms of environmental protection. The third result is the more accurate environment assessment due to the inclusion of a new element of direct pressure on ecosystems, while the fourth outcome is that the proposed methodology detects the impacts of the drivers of change in the Community of Madrid. Although the cartographic information is defined at the regional scale, the results obtained can be linked to the municipal planning scale. The proposed methodology can be a much more useful tool for regional spatial planning for three main reasons: it works at the same scale as regional planning (1:20,000), it incorporates the environmental information necessary for the correct identification of natural values and impacts at the municipal level, and it works with geographic information systems. These reasons allow an easier and quicker incorporation of ecosystems in spatial planning tools by simultaneously interpreting and comparing different land protection issues such as ecosystem loss and ecosystem services.